This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a show that shines a light on the ups and downs of everyday history. I'm Gabe Lucier, and today we're talking about one of the most annoying medical maladies of the twentieth century, a bout of hiccocks that lasted for nearly seven decades. The day was June thirteenth, nineteen twenty two. American farmer Charles Osborne started hiccupping and didn't stop until sixty eight years later. According to Guinness World Records, Osborne's plight was and still is the longest case of hiccups ever reported. Charles Osborne was born in eighteen ninety three in Anthon, Iowa, and he lived a blissful twenty nine years without hiccups. But then, while working on a pig farm near Union, Nebraska, he had an accident that changed his life forever. As Osbourne later recounted to People magazine, quote, I was hanging a three hundred and fifty pound hog for butchering. I picked it up and then I fell down. I felt nothing at the time, but the doctor said later that I busted a blood vessel the size of a pin in my brain. Doctor Terrence Anthony delivered that diagnosis in the nineteen eighties, six decades after Osborne's accident in nineteen twenty two. The farmer had been hiccuping non stop since then, leading Anthony to conclude that he must have damaged the part of his brain stem that inhibits the hiccup response. It's a plausible theory, since the brain is involved in hiccuping. In response to stimuli, the brain stem sends electrical signals through the reflex, the neural pathway that controls reflexes. These signals trigger the contraction of the muscles involved in respiration, including the diaphragm and the vocal cords or glottis. The involuntary spasm of the diaphragm causes the belly and chest to heave, and the abrupt closure of the glottis is what produces the signature hicck sound that gives hiccups their name. In most cases, hiccups are triggered by eating a large meal, drinking too much alcohol, or swallowing air while chewing. Sometimes they're brought on by bounts of excitement or laughter. And on rare occasions they can point to more serious underlying issues such as diabetes, reflux, central nervous system disorders, or cancer. It's still a mystery why we hiccup in the first place, as the action serves no clear useful purpose, but it stands to reason that if the part of the brain that regulates hiccups or to be damaged, it might get stuck in the on position, so to speak, and just trigger hiccups NonStop. Doctor Anthony believed that Osborne's fall resulted in such an injury, possibly is the result of a stroke. However, that's not the only explanation on the table. Another possibility is that the farmer damaged his diaphragm rather than his brain. There's a strong chance that his ribs were injured when the three hundred and fifty pound hog carcass fell on top of him, and since the lower ribs are attached to the diaphragm, the muscle may have been damaged as well, causing it to spasm endlessly. A normal hiccup attack lasts only a few minutes and produces anywhere between four to sixty hiccups per minute, with most being spaced apart at fairly regular intervals. Most of the time, hiccups go away on their own, but sometimes they can last for more than forty eight hours, at which point they're considered chronic, were persistent, and may require medical treatment to alleviate. In the rarest of cases, about one in one hundred thousand people, hiccups can continue for more than a month. This is known as intractable hiccups, and it's considered extremely difficult or maybe even impossible, to cure. Charles Osbourne was that unlucky one in one hundred thousand, but that never stopped him from looking for a cure. He traveled all over the country, as far out as Alaska to try different treatments. One time, at the Mayo Clinic, he was reportedly given a mixture of oxygen and carbon monoxide, and while inhaling, it did stop his hiccups temporarily. Huffing toxic gas wasn't exactly a long term solution. In the end, Osborne never found a cure for his hiccups, but he did find ways to manage them and to minimize their impact on his life. For example, he learned a breathing technique that allowed him to draw breath but between hiccups, thereby suppressing the hick sound almost entirely. This didn't help with the diaphragm spasms, which he experienced about twenty to forty times per minute on average, but the spasms were less frequent when he was flat on his back at night, and without the constant noise of his glottis, he was at least able to get some sleep. It's a good thing too, because one of the most dangerous complications of prolonged hiccuping is exhaustion from lack of sleep. Two of the other major threats are dehydration and severe weight loss, because, as you might imagine, it's hard to eat or drink when you're constantly hiccupping. Thankfully, Charles Osborne found a work around for that as well. For the last two decades of his life, he put all his meals through a blender in osterizer. To be exact, his favorite meal was said to be a blend of chicken dressing, broth, and milk, followed up with a couple of beers. The diet wouldn't win him any culinary praise, but it did help him maintain a healthy weight throughout his lifetime. It's easy to overlook just how disruptive Osborne's condition must have been, but he did shed some light on the subject in a nineteen seventy eight interview with the Associated Press. By that point, he'd had the hiccups for fifty six years straight, nearly twice as long as the time he lived without them. He said that his body was sore from the constant spasms and that he could no longer remember what it was like to not have them. He then added quote, I'd give everything I got in the world if I could get rid of them. Osborne's interview didn't bring him relief, but it did earn him national attention. He was named as the Guinness World Record holder for the longest hiccup attack in history, and made guest appearances on both The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and an early reality show called That's Incredible. Not long after, Osborne received a flood of letters from sympathetic viewers, roughly four thousand in total. Many of them offered their own home remedies for curing hiccups, everything from finger massages to drinking water through a paper towel. None of them were of any use to Osborne, who had already tried most of them decades earlier, but he still appreciated that folks wanted to help. All In all, Charles Osbourne was still able to live a happy life. He married twice, had eight children, and made a steady living selling farm equipment and auctioning livestock. Then, in early nineteen ninety, just as suddenly as his hiccups had started, they went away. It's unclear why they stopped, but I doubt Osborne cared one way or the other. The important thing was that he finally got to remember what it was like to live without hiccups. His respite didn't last long, though, because around one year later, on May first, nineteen ninety one, Charles Osbourne passed away at the age of ninety seven. He had lived with his condition for a full sixty eight years and hiccuped and estimated four hundred and thirty million times in total at the time of recording, No hiccupper has even come close to breaking his record, and for their sake, I hope they never do. I'm gay Blues yay, and hopefully you now know a little more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show, You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my way by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Kasby Bias for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening, and I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class

This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a show that shines a light on the ups and downs of everyday history. I'm Gabe Lucier, and today we're talking about one of the most annoying medical maladies of the twentieth century, a bout of hiccocks that lasted for nearly seven decades. The day was June thirteenth, nineteen twenty two. American farmer Charles Osborne started hiccupping and didn't stop until sixty eight years later. According to Guinness World Records, Osborne's plight was and still is the longest case of hiccups ever reported. Charles Osborne was born in eighteen ninety three in Anthon, Iowa, and he lived a blissful twenty nine years without hiccups. But then, while working on a pig farm near Union, Nebraska, he had an accident that changed his life forever. As Osbourne later recounted to People magazine, quote, I was hanging a three hundred and fifty pound hog for butchering. I picked it up and then I fell down. I felt nothing at the time, but the doctor said later that I busted a blood vessel the size of a pin in my brain. Doctor Terrence Anthony delivered that diagnosis in the nineteen eighties, six decades after Osborne's accident in nineteen twenty two. The farmer had been hiccuping non stop since then, leading Anthony to conclude that he must have damaged the part of his brain stem that inhibits the hiccup response. It's a plausible theory, since the brain is involved in hiccuping. In response to stimuli, the brain stem sends electrical signals through the reflex, the neural pathway that controls reflexes. These signals trigger the contraction of the muscles involved in respiration, including the diaphragm and the vocal cords or glottis. The involuntary spasm of the diaphragm causes the belly and chest to heave, and the abrupt closure of the glottis is what produces the signature hicck sound that gives hiccups their name. In most cases, hiccups are triggered by eating a large meal, drinking too much alcohol, or swallowing air while chewing. Sometimes they're brought on by bounts of excitement or laughter. And on rare occasions they can point to more serious underlying issues such as diabetes, reflux, central nervous system disorders, or cancer. It's still a mystery why we hiccup in the first place, as the action serves no clear useful purpose, but it stands to reason that if the part of the brain that regulates hiccups or to be damaged, it might get stuck in the on position, so to speak, and just trigger hiccups NonStop. Doctor Anthony believed that Osborne's fall resulted in such an injury, possibly is the result of a stroke. However, that's not the only explanation on the table. Another possibility is that the farmer damaged his diaphragm rather than his brain. There's a strong chance that his ribs were injured when the three hundred and fifty pound hog carcass fell on top of him, and since the lower ribs are attached to the diaphragm, the muscle may have been damaged as well, causing it to spasm endlessly. A normal hiccup attack lasts only a few minutes and produces anywhere between four to sixty hiccups per minute, with most being spaced apart at fairly regular intervals. Most of the time, hiccups go away on their own, but sometimes they can last for more than forty eight hours, at which point they're considered chronic, were persistent, and may require medical treatment to alleviate. In the rarest of cases, about one in one hundred thousand people, hiccups can continue for more than a month. This is known as intractable hiccups, and it's considered extremely difficult or maybe even impossible, to cure. Charles Osbourne was that unlucky one in one hundred thousand, but that never stopped him from looking for a cure. He traveled all over the country, as far out as Alaska to try different treatments. One time, at the Mayo Clinic, he was reportedly given a mixture of oxygen and carbon monoxide, and while inhaling, it did stop his hiccups temporarily. Huffing toxic gas wasn't exactly a long term solution. In the end, Osborne never found a cure for his hiccups, but he did find ways to manage them and to minimize their impact on his life. For example, he learned a breathing technique that allowed him to draw breath but between hiccups, thereby suppressing the hick sound almost entirely. This didn't help with the diaphragm spasms, which he experienced about twenty to forty times per minute on average, but the spasms were less frequent when he was flat on his back at night, and without the constant noise of his glottis, he was at least able to get some sleep. It's a good thing too, because one of the most dangerous complications of prolonged hiccuping is exhaustion from lack of sleep. Two of the other major threats are dehydration and severe weight loss, because, as you might imagine, it's hard to eat or drink when you're constantly hiccupping. Thankfully, Charles Osborne found a work around for that as well. For the last two decades of his life, he put all his meals through a blender in osterizer. To be exact, his favorite meal was said to be a blend of chicken dressing, broth, and milk, followed up with a couple of beers. The diet wouldn't win him any culinary praise, but it did help him maintain a healthy weight throughout his lifetime. It's easy to overlook just how disruptive Osborne's condition must have been, but he did shed some light on the subject in a nineteen seventy eight interview with the Associated Press. By that point, he'd had the hiccups for fifty six years straight, nearly twice as long as the time he lived without them. He said that his body was sore from the constant spasms and that he could no longer remember what it was like to not have them. He then added quote, I'd give everything I got in the world if I could get rid of them. Osborne's interview didn't bring him relief, but it did earn him national attention. He was named as the Guinness World Record holder for the longest hiccup attack in history, and made guest appearances on both The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and an early reality show called That's Incredible. Not long after, Osborne received a flood of letters from sympathetic viewers, roughly four thousand in total. Many of them offered their own home remedies for curing hiccups, everything from finger massages to drinking water through a paper towel. None of them were of any use to Osborne, who had already tried most of them decades earlier, but he still appreciated that folks wanted to help. All In all, Charles Osbourne was still able to live a happy life. He married twice, had eight children, and made a steady living selling farm equipment and auctioning livestock. Then, in early nineteen ninety, just as suddenly as his hiccups had started, they went away. It's unclear why they stopped, but I doubt Osborne cared one way or the other. The important thing was that he finally got to remember what it was like to live without hiccups. His respite didn't last long, though, because around one year later, on May first, nineteen ninety one, Charles Osbourne passed away at the age of ninety seven. He had lived with his condition for a full sixty eight years and hiccuped and estimated four hundred and thirty million times in total at the time of recording, No hiccupper has even come close to breaking his record, and for their sake, I hope they never do. I'm gay Blues yay, and hopefully you now know a little more about history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with the show, You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my way by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Kasby Bias for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening, and I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day in History class